Formwork is used in concrete construction to provide a mould or a surface onto which wet concrete can be poured for forming various elements such as floor slabs and beams for example. In the case of floor slabs, it is common for floors of a multi-story building to be formed sequentially and for formwork to be set out on a preceding floor in order to form the subsequent higher floor.
Such formwork normally comprises a frame or scaffolding that are used to support elevated forms comprising either lost formwork or formwork that can be removed from the concrete slab once the concrete is set. Reusable formwork may comprise aluminium formwork pans which are held at the top of the scaffolding. In addition, sheets or boards may also be used at the top of the framework.
The aluminium formwork pans are normally rectangular in plan form and have lips or edges extending downwardly from the formwork surface. These aluminium pans can be supported in forks which comprise of four upwardly directed fingers extending from a single vertical support which hold a corner each of four adjoining aluminium pans.
Normally, the scaffolding used to support the formwork is manually assembled from a number of discreet elements. These discreet elements include vertical tubular supports and bracing members which extend between adjacent vertical supports. It is common to provide a scaffold structure comprising four spaced vertical supports arranged in a rectangular plan form with a vertical support at each corner with the necessary bracing between the four vertical supports to hold each of the vertical supports upright. A fork is placed at the top of each vertical support with a screw jack in order to adjust the height of the fork prior to the aluminium formwork pans being put in place.
Each individual scaffold structure is spaced from adjacent scaffold structures by the width of the aluminium formwork pans so that a single formwork pan can bridge between each scaffold structure.
The construction of each scaffold structure is extremely labour intensive, time consuming and require a number of workers to hold each individual vertical support upright while the brace members are attached between individual vertical members so as to form a self-supporting structure.
It is against this background and the problems and difficulties associated therewith that the present invention has been developed.
Certain objects and advantages of the present invention will become apparent from the following description, taken in connection with the accompanying drawings, wherein, by way of illustration and example, an embodiment of the present invention is disclosed.